


Green for Happiness, Red for Love

by ohmyheichou



Series: open your eyes to the light [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, Reincarnation, Soulmates, because what's the fun of just one au, gotta combine em duh, tbh the idea wouldn't let me go so you get more
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-20
Updated: 2014-08-18
Packaged: 2018-02-05 03:59:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1804486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyheichou/pseuds/ohmyheichou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mikasa's favorite colors are green and red, but no one knows why she can even see colors.</p><p>An AU where you can only see colors after meeting your soulmate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This idea would not let me go. I love it for the angst potential and yet I only write happy-ish versions of it. Why??? I don't know really. I hope you like it!

Mikasa is born into a world of color. Her parents are soulmates, and they color coordinate every item in their house with the fastidiousness of newlyweds who want everything to be perfect. Mikasa’s room is painted in calm blues, an ocean of dreams and baby toys. She is drawn to the deep turquoise, and less so to the pale sky blue. Her parents don’t realize that she is differentiating her toys based on color. They just think she prefers the ocean to the sky. She does, but that’s an entirely different story.

 

*

 

Mikasa loves being outside. It has nothing to do with the way many children love playing in the dirt and generally making a mess of themselves. As it happens, Mikasa is a calm, even tempered child who dislikes messes. She’s unnaturally precocious. She doesn’t like dirt, but she loves being outside. Her parents notice this, of course, as good parents should, and they take her to the park everyday.

 

*

 

Mikasa’s favorite color is green. When she was little, her parents had noticed that she gravitated towards teals, turquoises, and greens more than other colors. They had found it odd, but it wasn’t a problem, so for the most part, they ignored it. But then Mikasa learned to speak properly, and they had to accept that somehow, she had been born with the ability to see color. No one knew what to make of it, but as it didn’t hurt anyone, her parents had chosen to ignore it once again. They indulged her love of green, however, and at least a third of her wardrobe is comprised of some shade of green. She likes dark greens better than pale greens, but she likes bright greens too. Her favorite green is a rich and dark, but vibrant, green.

 

*

 

Gardening becomes Mikasa’s favorite pastime. She likes being outside, likes the sun on her face and the wind in her hair. She especially likes all of the green she can surround herself with. She grows herbs for her mother’s tea, vegetables for her father’s salad, and flowers for herself. Red chrysanthemums for love, primroses for young love, forget-me-nots for true love, honeysuckle for the bonds of love, tulips for love, and all manner of other flowers. She likes red flowers the most. Red roses, red tulips, red chrysanthemums, red camellias, red carnations, red peonies. Red, red, red. Her parents joke that she must be in love. Red for love and flowers for love. And perhaps she is, but not with anyone she knows.

 

*

 

Mikasa’s second favorite color is red. She doesn’t like pink. She calls it weak, and her parents exchange bewildered glances with each other. How can a color be weak? Mikasa likes bold colors, so perhaps she dislikes all of the white that goes into making pink. She prefers bold reds: bright cherry reds, tomato reds, dark brick red, and every red in between. Red makes up another third of her wardrobe. Her mother shakes her head at Mikasa when they go shopping, but she ends up letting her choose whatever she wants anyway. Mikasa is her only daughter, after all, and she likes to spoil her. She thinks to herself it’s a good thing that Mikasa at least seems to have some sense of fashion, or else she’d end up looking like Christmas day in and day out. 

 

*

 

Mikasa ends up going to Stanford for college. She was always a smart girl, after all, and she gets admitted to a host of good colleges. She doesn’t really have a reason for choosing Stanford; she doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life, she never has. But she goes, and California suits her. She likes the sun, the perpetually warm weather. It’s a welcome change from the frigid winters of Massachusetts. She’s a little disappointed by the beaches, and thinks to herself that she should’ve gone to UCLA. It would have been a frivolous reason to go, but she doesn’t have a reason to be at Stanford either. Then she thinks about how her parents have given her so much and decides it’s for the best that she’s here. It’ll give her a lot of opportunities, at the very least. But she can’t help feeling gloomy as she sits on the beach and stares out at the waves that are too cold for her to brave.

 

*

 

She meets a great many people at Stanford. She isn’t friends with any of them though, not really. She’s never been good at acquiring more than close acquaintances. She isn’t standoffish by any means, but she isn’t sociable either. She’s reserved, and that isn’t exactly a beloved trait in her age group. She doesn’t really mind. All her life she’s felt like something’s missing, and she knows that it has nothing to do with socializing. The people she talked to all felt off, somehow, like _they_ were missing something, not her. What’s notable, however, is that she learns about reincarnation. Reincarnation, a concept that she has heard of but never given much thought to. But her friend believes in it, believes in it fervently, and she begins to wonder. She thinks about how she’s never liked any of the people she met, how she’s always felt like there’s something missing, how she can see in color without having met her soulmate. Maybe she did meet her soulmate, just in a different life. It would explain so much.

 

*

 

There is a boy, here, that she keeps seeing. She catches glimpses of him on her way to class or on her way to the dining hall. Flashes of yellow hair, a streak of blue in the corner of her eye. It’s stupid, really, because she’s doesn’t know his name, and she’s never even properly seen his face. It’s stupid, but she feels like he’s someone important. She feels like she should know who he is. She feels like _he_ should know who _she_ is. She never manages to talk to him, though, and soon enough freshman year is over and she’s going back home.

 

*

 

Her first day back in Massachusetts, she looks out the window to see a moving truck parked in front of the house next door. The second thing she notices about is how the woman is wearing a bright pink skirt with a striped orange and green shirt. She isn’t sure why anyone would even manufacture the shirt, but it’s clear that the woman, at least, never met her soulmate. The first thing she notices is the boy and his bright red scarf. It’s too warm for a scarf, but there it is. Her mother calls her downstairs to go meet the new neighbors, and it feels a little like fate.

 

*

 

His name is Eren. He is, like her, nineteen years old. Unlike her, he took a gap year instead of heading off to college. He is considering either UCLA or Boston University. His parents want him to stay close to home, but he’s been to California and he prefers it to Massachusetts. He’s loud and hot-tempered, but he’s also very sweet, especially to his mother. Mikasa wouldn’t mind staying with him forever. The thing about Eren, though, is that he only ever wears black. He accessorizes with red a lot: red shoelaces, red headphones, red cellphone. Mikasa knows that that isn’t a coincidence. She wouldn’t mind staying with him forever, but she knows he must already have a soulmate, and she knows that it isn’t her place to stay with him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about my really shitty hiatus. Kind of lost my mojo there for a bit, but I hope you like this update :)

Eren is born sad. It sounds like a fairy tale curse, or maybe just a teenager trying to be dramatic -- being born sad, that is. But there is really no other word for it. Eren is a good baby. Too good. He doesn’t scream, and he doesn’t get excited. He’s not normal. He passes by all of the normal benchmarks with no problems, yes, but he is serene in a way children shouldn’t be. Like he’s spent a lifetime burning off excess energy and now he’s content to be quiet. It worries Carla, and it worries Grisha, but there’s really nothing they can do. He is perfectly healthy; he’s just sad.

 

*

 

Unsurprisingly, Eren gravitates towards dark colors. Black, like despair, deep blues for melancholy, dark red. If Carla and Grisha had been soulmates, they might have noticed. They might have noticed, and they might have taken Eren to different doctors, instead of concluding that their child was as healthy as could be. But they weren’t soulmates, so they don’t notice, and Eren’s habit of choosing only the darkest colors goes unnoticed. As he gets older, he abandons the blues for all shades of red. They don’t notice that, either. 

 

*

 

As he grows up, Eren stops being so sad, at least outwardly. He’s outspoken about his beliefs, unafraid of society, and he gets in so many fights that his parents start worrying about his behavior. Not that they hadn’t worried, before, but still. It’s different now. Carla’s friends click their tongues and say _boys will be boys_ , as though that was in any way helpful. Grisha’s friends click their tongues over medical charts and conclude that there is nothing wrong with him physically. The thing is, he’s still a good boy; he finishes his chores perfectly, and he’s so very sweet with his mother. He’s a mama’s boy if there ever was one. Carla coddles him as much as she can get away with, because there just isn’t anything else she can do.

 

*

 

The thing about Eren, though, is that he is such a restless, restless soul. He thinks he’d like to go to the ocean for vacation, then changes his mind and decides that screaming his lungs off at an amusement park sounds better. He goes to the zoo, goes to the aquarium, decides he hates seeing animals stripped of their freedom, even contemplates breaking them out. He’d love to set the animals free, but he doesn’t know how to handle them, so he knows they’ll just rampage through the city. It isn’t a good idea, especially because he’ll probably get thrown in jail. Or juvie, at the very least, and either will break his mother’s heart. He had been an unusually calm child, but now he is restless, and as always, no one knows why.

 

*

 

The problem is that Eren doesn’t know what he wants. He knows he’s missing something. He tries karate, tae kwon do, kendo, anything that can potentially help him blow off steam. Martial arts gets rid of the restless itch under his skin temporarily, but it always comes back. He thinks maybe taking some time to unwind might be a good idea, and says so to his parents, who promptly pack everything up to take him on a cruise. It’s fun, and he gets to swim with dolphins. He loves interacting with animals who aren’t caged. It isn’t enough, not for him. He’s still missing something. He just doesn’t know what.

 

*

 

It all comes to a head during his senior year when he beats a couple of boys half to death for bullying some other kid. He doesn’t even know the kid that’s getting bullied, but he’ll be damned if he’ll sit by and watch people suffering for no reason. This isn’t something that can be passed off with an airy “boys will be boys.” The boys he fought are hospitalized, and their parents are contemplating pressing charges. It all gets resolved when some of the teachers testify that the hospitalized boys had been bullying someone, and that they had been the ones to throw the first punch (Eren was reckless, sure, but he wasn’t a complete idiot). Everyone involved decides it’s best if they ignore the incident altogether, but Eren’s parents are still worried. Eren’s had enough. He’s done with interacting with the same shitty people in his town and he’s done with school. So he decides to go off somewhere instead of going to college. And why not? He’s got enough money from odd jobs here and there, and he, unlike most of the people in the world, can see color, so he can appreciate all of the wonderful sights the world has to offer. So he goes, and that’s that.

 

*

 

The real problem, of course, is the fact that Eren is still restless, still plagued by an empty space in his heart. Oh, sure, traveling the world is fun and all, but he runs into quite a few problems. The world is actually terrible. People are cruel to each other for no reason, and even when they try to be kind, things still go horribly wrong. He also finds himself increasingly paranoid that something will happen to his parents before he goes home. They aren’t even of an age where he might expect them to keel over naturally, and they’ve always been very healthy people, but he worries. He calls them as often as he can, and every single time, his mother reassures him that they are fine. So he tries to ignore the panic that rises up every single time he calls and doesn’t get an answer right away, and he keeps traveling. The problem is not homesickness, and it isn’t even the helpless fury he feels whenever he thinks about how terrible the world can be. No, the real problem is that traveling the world hasn’t helped him. He still feels like there’s something missing, even after he’s seen the Taj Mahal and the Eiffel Tower, even after he’s spent a month in Spain trying (and failing) to learn how to communicate in Spanish. He’s still that sad little boy who doesn’t know what he wants.

 

*

 

He can’t travel forever, so eventually, Eren comes back. His parents have decided to move their family up to Massachusetts, to be closer to his mother’s parents, and to get farther away from the “incident,” otherwise known as Eren’s near stay in jail. He complains about having to move, but he can’t deny that he’s ready for a fresh start. And when he gets there, he is very very happy that his parents knew better than to listen to his complaining. Her name is Mikasa, and she is gorgeous. 

 

*

 

Eren is, in a word, besotted. Mikasa’s hair is glorious stuff and he’s pretty sure girls would kill for it. When she talks he swears it’s like the singing of sirens and when she smiles he thinks he can see the sun dancing across his eyes. He’s so besotted, in fact, that he fails to realize that she can see colors until the summer is almost over. When he finally realizes the horrifying truth, he chokes in the middle of eating his sandwich and then spends the next five minutes or so attempting to breathe properly. It is a lost cause, because whenever he thinks about the fact that Mikasa already has a soulmate (a soulmate!!! a **soul. _mate._** ), he starts choking again. An hour later, he’s lying in his bed blasting Linkin Park and wailing _in the end, it doesn’t even matter_. His mother is concerned for both his sanity and the state of his throat after all of that screaming, but he is too depressed to care. Going to college ( _away from Mikasa_ ) now seems like a death sentence to him, but really, there’s nothing he can do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was some impromptu kind of humor at the end there. Not sure that it really goes with the rest of the story but that's probably what I get for not writing for so long haha


End file.
